1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a dimming control apparatus, a lighting system driving apparatus, and a dimming control method able to be applied to a system using a light-emitting diode (LED).
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, incandescent light bulbs, a fluorescent lights, or the like, may be used in a lighting system. Recently, light emitting diodes (LEDs) have been substituted for incandescent light bulbs, fluorescent lights, or the like, due to advantages thereof such as low levels of power consumption, a long effective lifespan, and the like.
In accordance with the expansion of the market for LED lighting systems, the available types of LEDs have been increased. Therefore, types of dimming scheme and dimmers corresponding to technology for adjusting the brightness of lighting systems have also been diversified.
A control method is changed according to the type of dimmer provided in an LED lighting system, and an output needs to be controlled according to the provided dimmer.
Meanwhile, examples of dimmers used in analog lighting schemes include a sink dimmer and a source dimmer. Particularly, in a case of the sink dimmer, the sink dimmer has different variable ranges according to the kind thereof and dimming signals are thus different from each other.
Therefore, not all dimmers are compatible with a single LED lighting system, some dimmers may be compatible with one LED lighting system, while other dimmers are compatible with other LED lighting systems.
In lighting systems according to the related art, dimmers may use various dimming schemes such as source dimmers and sink dimmers, as described above, and sink dimmers may have various characteristics according to the manufacturer thereof, such that limitations exist in using appropriate dimmers.
Particularly, in the case in which a lighting system is already installed, it is difficult to change or substitute a dimmer and the applicability of a dimmer desired to be applied to a driving device of a lighting system needs to be checked with a test process every time.
Patent Document 1, the following related art document, relates to a lamp driving apparatus having an expanded dimming range, but does not disclose a technical feature allowing a range of dimming values to be reset, so as to correspond to various dimmers having different characteristics.